AMIA Informatics 2013 Year in Review
A compendium of notable publications and events in the field of biomedical informatics, November 2012 - October 2013
by
Daniel Masys, M.D.
Affiliate Professor
Biomedical and Health Informatics
University of Washington, Seattle

Page updated as of 19 November 2013

Presented here are the citations and events discussed at the Year in Review session at the AMIA Symposium, Tuesday November 19, 2013.
Note: publications marked by an asterisk* in each category represent People's Choice articles nominated by Fellows of the American College of Medical Informatics

Candidate new literature in Clinical Informatics
Topic Areas
Computerized Clinical Decision Support

For Providers

Infectious diseases
  1. Kempe A, et. al, Population-based versus practice-based recall for childhood immunizations: a randomized controlled comparative effectiveness trial. Am J Public Health. 2013 Jun;103(6):1116-23.
  2. Chambers LW, et. al, Impact of the Ottawa Influenza Decision Aid on healthcare personnel's influenza immunization decision: a randomized trial. J Hosp Infect. 2012 Nov;82(3):194-202.
  3. Forrest CB, et. al, Improving adherence to otitis media guidelines with clinical decision support and physician feedback. Pediatrics. 2013 Apr;131(4):e1071-81.
  4. Robbins GK, et. al, Efficacy of a clinical decision-support system in an HIV practice: a randomized trial. Ann Intern Med. 2012 Dec 4;157(11):757-66.
  5. Were MC, et. al, Computer-generated reminders and quality of pediatric HIV care in a resource-limited setting. Pediatrics. 2013 Mar;131(3):e789-96.

Medication management

  1. Piazza G, et. al, Randomized trial of physician alerts for thromboprophylaxis after discharge. Am J Med. 2013 May;126(5):435-42.
Psychiatric and behavioral health
  1. Rindal DB, et. al, Computer-assisted guidance for dental office tobacco-cessation counseling: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Prev Med. 2013 Mar;44(3):260-4.
General/Other
  1. Chen YY, et. al, Using a criteria-based reminder to reduce use of indwelling urinary catheters and decrease urinary tract infections. Am J Crit Care. 2013 Mar;22(2):105-14.
  2. Dalal AK, et.. al. Impact of an automated email notification system for results of tests pending at discharge: a cluster-randomized controlled trial. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Oct 23.
  3. Szucs-Farkas Z, et. al, Comparison of dual-energy subtraction and electronic bone suppression combined with computer-aided detection on chest radiographs: effect on human observers' performance in nodule detection. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2013 May;200(5):1006-13.
  4. Gimbel RW, et. al, Radiation exposure and cost influence physician medical image decision making: a randomized controlled trial. Med Care. 2013 Jul;51(7):628-32.
  5. Freundlich RE, et. al, A randomized trial of automated electronic alerts demonstrating improved reimbursable anesthesia time documentation. J Clin Anesth. 2013 Mar;25(2):110-4.
For Patients

Infectious diseases
  1. Fiks AG, et. al, Effectiveness of decision support for families, clinicians, or both on HPV vaccine receipt. Pediatrics. 2013 Jun;131(6):1114-24.
Cancer detection and care
  1. van Tol-Geerdink JJ, et. al, Choice between prostatectomy and radiotherapy when men are eligible for both: a randomized controlled trial of usual care vs decision aid. BJU Int. 2013 Apr;111(4):564-73..
  2. Green BB, et. al, An automated intervention with stepped increases in support to increase uptake of colorectal cancer screening: a randomized trial. Ann Intern Med. 2013 Mar 5;158(5 Pt 1):301-11.
  3. Schroy PC 3rd, et. al, Aid-assisted decision making and colorectal cancer screening: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Prev Med. 2012 Dec;43(6):573-83.
  Psychiatric and behavioral health
  1. Arndt J, et. al, The interactive effect of mortality reminders and tobacco craving on smoking topography. Health Psychol. 2013 May;32(5):525-32.
Studies showing no statistically significant difference with CDSS intervention vs. alternatives

  1. Duke JD, et. al, Adherence to drug-drug interaction alerts in high-risk patients: a trial of context-enhanced alerting. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):494-8.
  2. Beeckman D, et. al, A multi-faceted tailored strategy to implement an electronic clinical decision support system for pressure ulcer prevention in nursing homes: a two-armed randomized controlled trial. Int J Nurs Stud. 2013 Apr;50(4):475-86. .
  3. Nieuwlaat R, et. al, Randomised comparison of a simple warfarin dosing algorithm versus a computerised anticoagulation management system for control of warfarin maintenance therapy. Thromb Haemost. 2012 Dec;108(6):1228-35.
Methods and Issues in of Clinical Decision Support
  1. Zhou L, et. al, Structured representation for core elements of common clinical decision support interventions to facilitate knowledge sharing. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2013;192:195-9.*
  2. Kawamoto K, et. al, Key principles for a national clinical decision support knowledge sharing framework: synthesis of insights from leading subject matter experts. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jan 1;20(1):199-207.*
  3. Dixon BE, et. al, A pilot study of distributed knowledge management and clinical decision support in the cloud. Artif Intell Med. 2013 Sep;59(1):45-53.*
Unintended Effects of Clinical Systems

  1. Dixon BJ, et. al, Surgeons blinded by enhanced navigation: the effect of augmented reality on attention. Surg Endosc. 2013 Feb;27(2):454-61.
  2. Singh H, et. al, Information overload and missed test results in electronic health record-based settings. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 22;173(8):702-4.
  3. Phansalkar S, et. al, Drug-drug interactions that should be non-interruptive in order to reduce alert fatigue in electronic health records. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):489-93.*
  4. Novak LL, et. al, Mediation of adoption and use: a key strategy for mitigating unintended consequences of health IT implementation. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2012 Nov-Dec;19(6):1043-9.

Telemedicine

Cardiovascular diseases: hypertension

  1. Margolis KL, et. al, Effect of home blood pressure telemonitoring and pharmacist management on blood pressure control: a cluster randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2013 Jul 3;310(1):46-56.
  2. McKinstry B, et. al, Telemonitoring based service redesign for the management of uncontrolled hypertension: multicentre randomised controlled trial. BMJ. 2013 May 24;346:f3030.
  3. Bove AA, et. al, Managing hypertension in urban underserved subjects using telemedicine--a clinical trial. Am Heart J. 2013 Apr;165(4):615-21.
  4. Magid DJ, et. al, A pharmacist-led, American Heart Association Heart360 Web-enabled home blood pressure monitoring program. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2013 Mar 1;6(2):157-63.
  5. Jackson GL, et. al, Racial differences in the effect of a telephone-delivered hypertension disease management program. J Gen Intern Med. 2012 Dec;27(12):1682-9.
Other cardiovascular diseases:
  1. Reid RD, et. al, Randomized trial of an internet-based computer-tailored expert system for physical activity in patients with heart disease. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2012 Dec;19(6):1357-64.
Diabetes and glycemic control
  1. Tang PC, et. al, Online disease management of diabetes: engaging and motivating patients online with enhanced resources-diabetes (EMPOWER-D), a randomized controlled trial. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):526-34.
  2. Trief PM, et. al, Adherence to diabetes self care for white, African-American and Hispanic American telemedicine participants: 5 year results from the IDEATel project. Ethn Health. 2013;18(1):83-96.
  3. Stone RA, et. al, The Diabetes Telemonitoring Study Extension: an exploratory randomized comparison of alternative interventions to maintain glycemic control after withdrawal of diabetes home telemonitoring. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2012 Nov-Dec;19(6):973-9.
Infectious diseases
  1. Lovejoy TI. Telephone-delivered motivational interviewing targeting sexual risk behavior reduces depression, anxiety, and stress in HIV-positive older adults. Ann Behav Med. 2012 Dec;44(3):416-21.
Medication management
  1. Derose SF, et. al, Automated outreach to increase primary adherence to cholesterol-lowering medications. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Jan 14;173(1):38-43.
Psychiatric and behavioral health telemedicine

     Depression
  1. Glozier N, et. al, Internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy for adults with mild to moderate depression and high cardiovascular disease risks: a randomised attention-controlled trial. PLoS One. 2013;8(3):e59139. 
  2. Fortney JC, et. al, Practice-based versus telemedicine-based collaborative care for depression in rural federally qualified health centers: a pragmatic randomized comparative effectiveness trial. Am J Psychiatry. 2013 Apr 1;170(4):414-25.
  3. Moreno FA, et. al, Use of standard Webcam and Internet equipment for telepsychiatry treatment of depression among underserved Hispanics. Psychiatr Serv. 2012 Dec;63(12):1213-7.
  4. Hunkeler EM, et. al, A web-delivered care management and patient self-management program for recurrent depression: a randomized trial. Psychiatr Serv. 2012 Nov;63(11):1063-71.
  5. Moritz S, et. al, The more it is needed, the less it is wanted: attitudes toward face-to-face intervention among depressed patients undergoing online treatment. Depress Anxiety. 2013 Feb;30(2):157-67.
  6. Lintvedt OK, et. al, Evaluating the effectiveness and efficacy of unguided internet-based self-help intervention for the prevention of depression: a randomized controlled trial. Clin Psychol Psychother. 2013 Jan-Feb;20(1):10-27.
Lifestyle modification
  1. Whittemore R, et. al, An internet obesity prevention program for adolescents. J Adolesc Health. 2013 Apr;52(4):439-47.
  2. Stanczyk NE, et. al, Influence of delivery strategy on message-processing mechanisms and future adherence to a Dutch computer-tailored smoking cessation intervention. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Feb 6;15(2):e28.
  3. Rooke S, et. al, Effectiveness of a self-guided web-based cannabis treatment program: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Feb 15;15(2):e26.
  4. Schneider F, et. al, Periodic email prompts to re-use an internet-delivered computer-tailored lifestyle program: influence of prompt content and timing. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Jan 31;15(1):e23.
Other psychiatric and behavioral conditions
  1. Buhrman M, et. al, Guided Internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic pain patients who have residual symptoms after rehabilitation treatment: randomized controlled trial. Eur J Pain. 2013 May;17(5):753-65.
  2. Deen TL, et. al, Patient acceptance of and initiation and engagement in telepsychotherapy in primary care. Psychiatr Serv. 2013 Apr 1;64(4):380-4.
  3. Carter FA, et. al, Suitability and acceptability of computerised cognitive behaviour therapy for anxiety disorders in secondary care. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2013 Feb;47(2):142-52.
  4. Powell J, et. al, Effectiveness of a web-based cognitive-behavioral tool to improve mental well-being in the general population: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res. 2012 Dec 31;15(1):e2.
  5. Irvine AB, et. al, Web-based intervention to promote physical activity by sedentary older adults: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Feb 5;15(2):e19.
Other Telemedicine application areas and General Issues
  1. Piqueras M, et. al, Effectiveness of an interactive virtual telerehabilitation system in patients after total knee arthoplasty: a randomized controlled trial. J Rehabil Med. 2013 Apr;45(4):392-6.
  2. Pedone C, et. al, Efficacy of multiparametric telemonitoring on respiratory outcomes in elderly people with COPD: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Health Serv Res. 2013 Mar 6;13:82.
  3. Ali J, et. al, Telemedicine as a potential medium for teaching the advanced trauma life support (ATLS) course. J Surg Educ. 2013 Mar-Apr;70(2):258-64.
  4. Schwarz EB, et. al, Computer-assisted provision of hormonal contraception in acute care settings. Contraception. 2013 Feb;87(2):242-50. doi: 10.1016/j.contraception.2012.07.003.
  5. Salisbury C, et. al, A pragmatic randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of 'PhysioDirect' telephone assessment and advice services for physiotherapy. Health Technol Assess. 2013 Jan;17(2):1-157, v-vi.
Telemedicine studies showing no statistically significant outcome vs. control

  1. Wagner G, et. al, Internet-delivered cognitive-behavioural therapy v. conventional guided self-help for bulimia nervosa: long-term evaluation of a randomised controlled trial. Br J Psychiatry. 2013 Feb;202:135-41.
  2. Schopf T, et. al, Impact of interactive web-based education with mobile and email-based support of general practitioners on treatment and referral patterns of patients with atopic dermatitis: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res. 2012 Dec 5;14(6):e171.
  3. Cartwright M, et. al, Effect of telehealth on quality of life and psychological outcomes over 12 months (Whole Systems Demonstrator telehealth questionnaire study): nested study of patient reported outcomes in a pragmatic, cluster randomised controlled trial BMJ. 2013 Feb 26;346:f653.

Health Applications of Mobile Electronics: Cell phones, smart phones, iPods, etc.

For acquiring data from study participants

  1. Kristjánsdóttir ÓB, et. al, A smartphone-based intervention with diaries and therapist-feedback to reduce catastrophizing and increase functioning in women with chronic widespread pain: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Jan 7;15(1):e5.
For delivering treatment and or prevention interventions
  1. Junod Perron N, et. al, Text-messaging versus telephone reminders to reduce missed appointments in an academic primary care clinic: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Health Serv Res. 2013 Apr 4;13:125.
  2. Lin H, et. al, Effectiveness of a short message reminder in increasing compliance with pediatric cataract treatment: a randomized trial. Ophthalmology. 2012 Dec;119(12):2463-70.
  3. Evans WD, et. al, Pilot evaluation of the text4baby mobile health program. BMC Public Health. 2012 Nov 26;12:1031.
Mobile Electronics studies showing no statistically significant outcome vs. control
  1. Mbuagbaw L, et. al, The Cameroon Mobile Phone SMS (CAMPS) trial: a randomized trial of text messaging versus usual care for adherence to antiretroviral therapy. PLoS One. 2012;7(12):e46909.

Practice of Clinical Informatics
  
New methods and their results, position papers and reviews

  1. Smith SW, et. al, Healthcare information technology's relativity problems: a typology of how patients' physical reality, clinicians' mental models, and healthcare information technology differ. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jun 26.
  2. White RW, et. al, Web-scale pharmacovigilance: listening to signals from the crowd. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):404-8.*
  3. Lauer MS, et. al, The randomized registry trial--the next disruptive technology in clinical research? N Engl J Med. 2013 Oct 24;369(17):1579-81.*
  4. Boland MR, et. al, Discovering medical conditions associated with periodontitis using linked electronic health records. J Clin Periodontol. 2013 May;40(5):474-82.
  5. Morgan AJ, et. al, Internet-based recruitment to a depression prevention intervention: lessons from the Mood Memos study. J Med Internet Res. 2013 Feb 12;15(2):e31.
New technologies
  1. Loughran SP, et. al, No increased sensitivity in brain activity of adolescents exposed to mobile phone-like emissions. Clin Neurophysiol. 2013 Jul;124(7):1303-8.
  2. Kim H, et. al, Kinematic data analysis for post-stroke patients following bilateral versus unilateral rehabilitation with an upper limb wearable robotic system. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2013 Mar;21(2):153-64.
  3. Tennant JN, et. al, Reliability and validity of a mobile phone for radiographic assessment of ankle injuries: a randomized inter- and intraobserver agreement study. Foot Ankle Int. 2013 Feb;34(2):228-33.
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Candidate new literature in Clinical Bioinformatics
Topic Areas
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Clinical Bioinformatics of human health and disease

General
  1. Blair DR, et. al, A nondegenerate code of deleterious variants in mendelian Loci contributes to complex disease risk. Cell. 2013 Sep 26;155(1):70-80.*
Cancer
  1. Yuan Y, et. al, Quantitative image analysis of cellular heterogeneity in breast tumors complements genomic profiling. Sci Transl Med. 2012 Oct 24;4(157):157ra143.*
  2. Irshad S, et. al, A molecular signature predictive of indolent prostate cancer. Sci Transl Med. 2013 Sep 11;5(202):202ra122.*
  3. Frattini V, et. al, The integrated landscape of driver genomic alterations in glioblastoma. Nat Genet. 2013 Oct;45(10):1141-9.*
  4. Hu J, et. al, Heterogeneity of tumor-induced gene expression changes in the human metabolic network. Nat Biotechnol. 2013 Jun;31(6):522-9.*
Psychiatric and Behavioral Health
  1. Gilman SR, et. al, Diverse types of genetic variation converge on functional gene networks involved in schizophrenia. Nat Neurosci. 2012 Dec;15(12):1723-8.*
The practice of bioinformatics
  1. Cassa CA, et. al, A novel, privacy-preserving cryptographic approach for sharing sequencing data. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jan 1;20(1):69-76.
  2. Samwald M, et. al, Pharmacogenomics in the pocket of every patient? A prototype based on quick response codes. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):409-12.
Unintended Consequences
  1. Gymrek M, et. al, Identifying personal genomes by surname inference. Science. 2013 Jan 18;339(6117):321-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1229566.
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Editors' Choice publications

JAMIA - Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

  1. Witten DM, et. al, Scientific research in the age of omics: the good, the bad, and the sloppy. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jan 1;20(1):125-7.
  2. White RW, et. al, Web-scale pharmacovigilance: listening to signals from the crowd. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):404-8.
  3. Radley DC, et. al, Reduction in medication errors in hospitals due to adoption of computerized provider order entry systems. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 May 1;20(3):470-6. 
  4. Embi PJ, et. al, Computerized provider documentation: findings and implications of a multisite study of clinicians and administrators. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jul-Aug;20(4):718-26.
  5. Deutsch MB, et. al, Electronic medical records and the transgender patient: recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health EMR Working Group. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Jul-Aug;20(4):700-3.
JBI - Journal of Biomedical Informatics
  1. Rothman MJ, et. al, Development and validation of a continuous measure of patient condition using the Electronic Medical Record. J Biomed Inform. 2013 Oct;46(5):837-48.
  2. Weiskopf NG, et. al, Defining and measuring completeness of electronic health records for secondary use. J Biomed Inform. 2013 Oct;46(5):830-6. 
  3. Friedman C, et. al, Natural language processing: state of the art and prospects for significant progress, a workshop sponsored by the National Library of Medicine. J Biomed Inform. 2013 Oct;46(5):765-73.
  4. Post AR, et. al, The Analytic Information Warehouse (AIW): a platform for analytics using electronic health record data. J Biomed Inform. 2013 Jun;46(3):410-24.
  5. Valizadegan H, et. al, Learning classification models from multiple experts. J Biomed Inform. 2013 Sep 13. pii: S1532-0464(13)00122-6.
Implementation Science and Sociotechnical articles: 2013 Diana Forsythe Award Finalists
  1. Ackerman SL, et. al, Benefit or burden? A sociotechnical analysis of diagnostic computer kiosks in four California hospital emergency departments. Soc Sci Med. 2012 Dec;75(12):2378-85.
  2. Novak LL, et. al, Mediation of adoption and use: a key strategy for mitigating unintended consequences of health IT implementation. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2012 Nov-Dec;19(6):1043-9.

"Top Ten" Notable Events

10 - NY Times article headlines "Search of DNA Sequences Reveals Full Identities" -  January 17, 2013
  9 - SNOMED CT and LOINC to be linked by cooperative work

  8 -  Supreme Court rules that human genes cannot be patented, June 16, 2013
  7 -  NIH funds a a consortium of research groups to develop the Clinical Genome Resource  Sept 25, 2013.
  6 -  OSTP Federal memo on data sharing - Feb 22, 2013
  5 -  EHR adoption close to 70% in US thanks to MU.
  4 -  CA state appellate court ruled that providers do not necessarily have liability to patients when medical records are stolen or misappropriated unless they are accessed by a third party.
  3 - Clinical informatics exam given for the first time, October 7-18, 2013
  2 - Morrie Collen Turns 100   November 12, 2013
  1 - Healthcare.gov inadventently shows the societal power of the web

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Search methodologies used to identify potentially high impact literature

This Year in Review was assembled using different approaches for different sections:

1. A PubMed literature search for randomized controlled trials of informatics interventions of Clinical trials that included > 100 patients or providers, and those which appear to have the potential for significant clinical impact, published in the interval between November 2012 and October 2013.

Clinical informatics searching methods: 
  • Primary PubMed search string:  randomized controlled trial[ptyp] AND (telemedicine[mh] OR informatics[tiab] OR medical informatics[mh] OR internet[ti] OR mobile[ti])
  • Secondary PubMed search string: randomized[ti] AND (telemedicine[mh] OR informatics[tiab] OR medical informatics[mh])
2. For notable Computational biology and bioinformatics:
  • Primary PubMed search string: computational biology[mh] NOT (review[pt] OR letter[pt] OR case reports[pt] OR editorial[pt])
  • Also (genomic[ti] OR genome[ti] OR bioinformatic*[ti]), limited to the core clinical journals.
  • Secondary PubMed search string: computational biology[mh] AND (letter[pt] OR editorial[pt])
  • To see which articles were generating more discussion, follow-up with consideration of key science blogs and news sites
3. Editors Choice publications were the result of an invitation to informatics journals via their editorial board or editor members, by a communication to the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) discussion list.

4. People's Choice publications and Top Ten Events list were the result of an invitation sent to the ACMI discussion list that requested nominations of any publication of any type that did not represent one's own publications, for the period November 2012 to October 2013, as well as notable milestones and events of interest.  People's choice publications are marked with asterisks within each topic section.


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Special Thanks to...
  • Jos Aarts
  • Andrew Balas
  • David Bates
  • Chris Chute
  • Jim Cimino
  • Don Detmer
  • Gunther Eysenbach
  • Reed Gardner
  • Bill Hersh
  • Betsy Humphreys
  • George Hripcsak
  • Bonnie Kaplan
  • Ross Koppel
  • Ira Kalet
  • Zak Kohane

  • Harold Lehmann
  • Yves Lussier
  • Alexa McCray
  • Blackford Middleton
  • Joyce Mitchell
  • Lucila Ohno-Machado
  • Judy Ozbolt
  • Ted Shortliffe
  • Dean Sittig
  • Kent Spackman
  • David States
  • Jaap Suermondt
  • Jonathan Teich
  • Mark Tuttle
  • Bonnie Westra